So far this year I’ve read 16 books. 7 off my target and 20 short of last years total. Maybe I’m slacking on the reading front 🙂
So, what’s my best book of 2017? well it’s an oldie: “The Bruised Reed” by Puritan Richard Sibbes.
Sibbes takes Isaiah 42:3 (and the New Testament application in Matthew 12:20) and writes with astonishing depth.
“A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall not He quench; He shall bring forth judgment unto truth”
Isaiah 42:3
I’ve actually been meeting up with a couple of guys from our church and we’ve been reading it together – a habit I highly recommend. Here are some of my favourite quotes:
“Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in whom our strength lies.”
“God sees fit that we should taste of that cup of which his Son drank so deep, that we might feel a little what sin is, and what his Son’s love was. But our comfort is that Christ drank the dregs of the cup for us, and will
succor us, so that our spirits may not utterly fail under that little taste of his displeasure which we may feel. He became not only a man but a curse, a man of sorrows, for us. He was broken that we should not be broken; he was troubled, that we should not be desperately troubled; he became a curse, that we should not be accursed. Whatever may be wished for in an all sufficient comforter is all to be found in Christ.”
He “binds up the broken-hearted” (Isa. 61:1). As a mother is tenderest toward the most diseased and weakest child, so does Christ most mercifully incline to the weakest. Likewise he puts an instinct into the weakest things to rely upon something stronger than themselves for support. The vine steadies itself upon the elm, and the weakest creatures often have the strongest shelters. The consciousness of the church’s weakness makes her willing to lean on her Beloved and to hide herself under his wing.”
“we need bruising, that reeds may know themselves to be reeds, and not oaks”
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